Top Stories This Week

• What’s happening at Woodhull;
• Sexual abuse of incarcerated trans folks;
• SCOTUS and the right to gender-affirming care for trans youth;
• The conservative fight against medication abortion;
• Using drag bans to peddle gender conformity;
• An anti-immigrant ruling and its effect on marriage equality; and
• Woodhull’s take on age verification and our rights to free speech and privacy. 

(Photo: Fine PhotoGraphics)

We’re going to the Supreme Court!

The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear HB 1181, the Texas Age Verification Law challenge. Woodhull is proud to have filed an Amicus Brief in support of the constitutional challenge brought by the ACLU, the Free Speech Coalition, and others in Free Speech Coalition v. Ken Paxton, Attorney General of Texas. We joined Electronic Frontier Foundation in the brief and are represented by Walters Law Group and Silverstein Legal.

The Supreme Court will solicit arguments and briefs about the case, and thanks to Mojohost's continued support, Woodhull will be there! 

Woodhull has been working to oppose unconstitutional age verification legislation throughout this year’s legislative sessions. We oppose legislation that violates our human rights to privacy and free expression!

Join us for July’s Censorship Series Program!

The Supreme Court Decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, in June 2022, has had devastating consequences for access to all reproductive health, most visibly abortion access. Some states rushed to totally ban abortion and related reproductive healthcare, going so far as to restrict access to information about abortion and reproductive care. Others protected it in their constitutions and expanded access for out-of-state patients. Not only are these restrictions violations of our fundamental human right to sexual freedom, but they also violate our free speech rights! We’ll address this intersection during our conversation and provide you with tools for fighting back against this dangerous trend.

Celebrating Sexual Freedom in New Orleans!

Last week, our COO, Mandy Salley, traveled to New Orleans, LA, to attend the country’s largest sexual freedom lifestyle event, Naughty N’Awlins! Mandy was joined by fellow advocates from OPEN and the National Coalition of Sexual Freedom (NCSF). 

“I was thrilled to discuss the sexual freedom issues that are important to members of the lifestyle community,” says Salley. “While at Naughty, we marched in the sexual freedom parade (pictured above). Proclaiming the message of sexual freedom while marching through the streets of New Orleans was a true pleasure! Thank you to the organizers, staff, and volunteers at Naughty for having us!”

(Erik Mclean via UnSplash)

Trans Man Forced to Undergo Prison Genital Exams Wins $275,000 Settlement (The Appeal)
 

Incarceration denies people their most fundamental freedoms and human rights. Tragically, in the New York prison system, there’s a disturbing pattern of targeted attacks on incarcerated trans folks: “The State Commission of Correction, which is responsible for overseeing New York’s prisons and jails, has published no regulations on the incarceration of trans people. As a result, the facilities are left to their own devices when assigning them housing—and most default to using people’s sex assigned at birth. A New York City government task force found in 2022 that city jails housed gender nonconforming people in units inconsistent with their gender identity in a ‘vast majority’ of cases. The practice lands trans people in situations where they report routine physical and sexual violence at the hands of staff and other incarcerated people.” Read more.

(Timothy D. Easley/AP)

Supreme Court to decide whether it’s unconstitutional to ban gender-affirming care for trans youth (The 19th)
 

The current conservative Justices on the Supreme Court are relentlessly attacking our human rights. Unfortunately, trans youth’s rights to gender-affirming care appear to be next on the chopping block. Orion Rummler writes: “The Supreme Court has agreed to take up the question of whether gender-affirming care bans for transgender youth are unconstitutional, in response to the Biden administration petitioning on behalf of trans youth and their families. The high court’s ruling on this issue has the potential to curtail — or bolster — access to gender-affirming care across the country, as 25 states now ban such medical care for trans youth.” Read more.

(Shuran Huang/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

GOP States Double Down on Fighting Medication Abortion After Supreme Court Keeps It Legal (The Intercept) 

Surprisingly, the Supreme Court recently dismissed a challenge to the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, which can be used for medication abortion. Yet this ruling hasn’t stopped conservatives in their fight against reproductive justice. Jordan Smith writes: “In statements just after the Supreme Court’s [...] ruling, the attorneys general of Kansas and Missouri vowed to press their case. ‘We are moving forward undeterred with our litigation to protect both women and their unborn children,’ Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said. And Idaho is fighting to roll back abortion access in other ways as well. Still outstanding from the Supreme Court this term is a ruling in another consequential case — Idaho v. United States — where the state is challenging long-standing federal law that requires hospitals to provide whatever emergency medical treatment is necessary to stabilize a patient, including abortion.” Read more.

Note: On June 27, after Smith wrote this piece, SCOTUS dismissed the Idaho v. United States case.

(Austen Risolvato/Rewire News Group)

How Conservatives Use Drag Bans to Peddle Gender Conformity (Rewire News Group) 

Drag bans are unconscionable, unjustifiable restraints on the LGBTQIA+ community’s human rights to safety and self-expression. Lisa Needham writes: “All of these laws and proposals have one goal: making LGBTQ+ people—or anyone else not wedded to traditional gender roles—feel uncomfortable and unsafe. If people feel unsafe in this fashion, they will retreat from public life or radically change their self-presentation to conform better. Conservatives are likely thrilled with either result, as in both cases, they will have robbed queer people of their ability to fully and authentically participate in society. And that’s exactly the point.” Read more.

(Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

SCOTUS’s Anti-Immigrant Ruling Imperils Marriage Equality and LGBTQ Lives (Truthout) 

Everyone – whether documented or undocumented – has a right to family unity. Taking that right away from mixed status couples makes all of us less safe. Marjorie Cohn writes: “In a 6-3 ruling, the reactionary majority of the Supreme Court placed the right to marriage equality squarely on the chopping block. The court held that U.S. citizens have no constitutional right to have their noncitizen spouses enter the United States, so the government doesn’t have to give a reason for excluding them. Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, noted in dissent that ‘there is no question that excluding a citizen’s spouse burdens her right to marriage, and that burden requires the Government to provide at least a factual basis for its decision.’ They accused the majority of issuing an unnecessarily broad ruling that could be used to strike down the right to same-sex marriage.” Read more.

(Woodhull Freedom Foundation)

Woodhull’s Take: California’s A.B. 3080 and Threats to Our Rights to Free Speech and Privacy (Woodhull’s Sex & Politics Blog) 

A new censorship bill passed the California Assembly in May – A.B. 3080 – which would require digital age verification to access certain websites that display so-called “sexual content.” The bill threatens our rights to free speech and privacy. We at the Woodhull Freedom Foundation share our take: “As Allison Grossman, PhD, Woodhull’s Senior Policy Analyst, recently explained in Fact Checked by Woodhull, online ID checks aren’t a momentary display like flashing your ID at the liquor store cashier; they involve uploading data-laden documents to the internet. This creates what EFF describes as a ‘lasting record’ of the user’s visit. And of course, the data from IDs or other age verification documents is vulnerable to breaches. We at the Woodhull Freedom Foundation vehemently oppose A.B. 3080 and efforts to restrict our access to sexual content online.” Read more.

The Woodhull Freedom Foundation is a non-profit organization recognized under Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Your contribution is tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. 
Our federal identification number is 11-3681116.
Copyright © 2024 Woodhull Freedom Foundation. All Rights Reserved.